“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Syria - SAA ( Syrian Army) and Hezbollah advance in Southern Aleppo

Syrian forces break 'Islamic State' siege of Aleppo air base

The Syrian army has achieved a major victory at an air base besieged by
the 'Islamic State' militant group. The victory comes as President
Bashar al-Assad’s forces ramp up their fight against the extremists.

Assad's forces on Tuesday broke a prolonged siege by "Islamic State" ("IS") militants of an Aleppo military air base.
Syrian government forces managed to reach fellow soldiers who had been
holed up inside the base, which had been besieged by the terror group
for nearly two years.
According to an AFP reporter present at the scene, soldiers fired shots into the air in celebration.Syria steps up its campaign
Syria government forces have ramped up their fighting against IS, especially in the key region of Aleppo.
Earlier this month, the Syrian army
took back a key transit route
held by the militants that linked central Syria to the city of Aleppo.
The announcement was seen as a major victory for the embattled Syrian
president, who has been aided in his fight against IS by Russian
airstrikes since the end of September.
Also on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier discussed by phone the
increasingly unstable situation in Syria.
The city of Aleppo - once the country's most populous city - is
currently contested by government forces and various rebel factions,
with IS members controlling territory outside the city's borders.
blc/kms (AFP, Reuters, Interfax)AN INTERESTING VIEW OF THE CURRENT SITUATION IN SYRIA

97 comments:

It took almost two weeks for the Syrian forces to liberate the Khanasser-Ithriya highway. Nonetheless, they were finally able to secure the remaining territory along the strategic supply route that had been captured by ISIS.

On Wednesday, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Hezbollah, the National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Palestinian pro-government militia “Liwaa Al-Quds” broke-through ISIS’ remaining frontlines to the north of Ithriya and conducted a massive retreat of the militants to the town of Tabaqa in the Al-Raqqa province. Separately, the terrorists retreating along the Salamiyah-Raqqa highway came under attack from the Russian Air Force’s SU-24 fighter jets.

American officials claimed that the Israelis overstated the effectiveness of the air war against Hezbollah and cited the failure to hit any of the Hezbollah leaders in spite of dropping 23 tons of bombs on its alleged headquarters bunker.[124] Al-Manar TV station only went dark for two minutes after the strike before it was back into the air. The TV station was bombed 15 times during the war but never faltered after the first hiccup.[125]

Areas in Lebanon targeted by Israeli bombing, 12 July to 13 August 2006.

During the war the Israeli Air Force flew 11,897 combat missions, which was more than the number of sorties during the 1973 October War (11,223) and almost double the number during the 1982 First Lebanon War (6,052).[126]

The Israeli artillery fired 170,000 shells, more than twice the number fired in the 1973 October War.[127] A senior officer in the IDF Armored Corps told Haaretz that he would be surprised if it turned out that even five Hezbollah fighters had been killed by the 170,000 shells fired.[128]

The Israeli Navy fired 2,500 shells.[129]

The marvelous IDF however did what it does best and that is inflicting horror and terror against civilians

According to various media, between 1,000 and 1,200 people were reported dead. Additionally, there were between 480 and 1100 people wounded, and over 1,000,000 were temporarily made refugees

But let’s be fair that was in 2006. Surely by 2014 the IDF was HARDCORE BAD ASS OORAH STATUS.

Well, maybe not:

A controversial military investigation is illuminating the deadliest incident of Operation Protective Edge, as well as one of the Israeli army’s most shadowy directives: an order intended to thwart the abduction of IDF soldiers, even at the risk of killing them. Codenamed Hannibal, the protocol was carried out in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on August 1, 2014, a date now known as Black Friday; the resulting artillery barrage and torrent of airstrikes killed 190 Palestinians in two days, according to Gaza human rights groups, after the suspected capture by Hamas fighters of 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin. Recordings of the IDF assault, publicized last week, suggest a chaotic and undisciplined outburst of violence: “I repeat, stop the shooting!” the brigade commander yells over the field radio. “You’re shooting like retards. You’ll kill one another. Enough! I already have dead, retards. Wait a minute…”

The heavily edited recordings, obtained by Yoav Zitun of Ynet, were set to dramatic music and “published with permission from the IDF censor.” Chief of Staff Benny Gantz denounced their release — “The army is not a reality TV show…not that I’m hiding anything” — and has reportedly ordered the military police to find those responsible.

According to Ha’aretz military correspondent Amos Harel, the disclosure should be understood in the context of the IDF’s ongoing investigation of possible criminal conduct by officers in Gaza, most notably on Black Friday: “This information was leaked as part of a struggle that has two goals: to restrict the freedom of action of the MAG [Military Advocate General] in the investigation of operational flaws and, as part of an ongoing effort, to save Col. Ofer Winter, commander of the Givati infantry brigade.” Apparently it was anticipated that most Israelis would respond sympathetically to the sounds of soldiers under wartime stress, and indeed “the immediate public reaction was massive support for the commanders and resistance to a criminal investigation,” Harel told me in an email.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/shooting-recordings-directive#sthash.hscmC6nJ.dpuf

Israel should be happy that ISIS being destroyed by others will spare them the debacle if it ultimately came down to a fight between ISIS and the IDF. I’m sure the next time IDF would be very impressive relying on their timely honed bulldozing skills developed in Palestine and Gaza.

Maybe the Israeli should take lessons on how to murder a people by the Iranians, Palestinian, Syrians, or Hezbollah, since they do it to each other so well.

The IDF, as you so often repeat squashed just ONE idiot terrorist support, what was her name? Rachael "pancake" Corrie?

Yeah...

Defending a terrorist's EMPTY house, laid down in front a a huge bulldozer..

Now talk about stupid....

LOL

Just as dumb as those Americans that would lay down in front of US trains carrying nukes..

Brian Wilson

On September 1, 1987, while engaged in a protest against the shipping of U.S. weapons to Central America in the context of the Contra wars,[2] Willson and other members of a Veterans Peace Action Team blocked railroad tracks at the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station. An approaching train did not stop, and struck the veterans. Willson was hit, ultimately losing both legs below the knee while suffering a severe skull fracture with loss of his right frontal lobe. Subsequently, he discovered that he had been identified for more than a year as an FBI domestic "terrorist" suspect under President Reagan's anti-terrorist task force provisions and that the train crew that day had been advised not to stop the train

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Had Hezbollah known how Israel was going to respond, the group would not have captured two Israeli soldiers last month in northern Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday.

In a raid into Israel on July 12, Hezbollah militants killed three Israeli soldiers and abducted two others.

That attack sparked a response that the Israelis said was intended to target Hezbollah militants, but which resulted in the killing of more than 1,000 Lebanese -- most of them civilians -- and the widespread destruction of the country's infrastructure. The death toll among Israelis was 159, including 41 civilians.

If someone had said July 11 that there was "a one percent possibility" Israel's military response would be as extensive as it turned out to be, "I would say no, I would not have entered this for many reasons -- military, social, political, economic," said Nasrallah, speaking in Arabic.

Not even the families of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel would have wanted to bring on such action, he said.

"If there was a one percent possibility, we would not have done that. We would not have done any capturing."

The torture and slaughter of Iraqi civilians is reaching unprecedented heights with estimates of up to 655,000 dead. Night after night death squads rampage through Iraq's main cities. In Baghdad, up to a hundred bodies a day are dumped on the streets. Often they've been tortured with electric drills. Yet those doing the killing have little to do with al Qaeda or Sunni insurgents. The majority of the killings are carried out by Shia death squads who want to turn Iraq into a Shia state aligned to Iran.

This shocking film investigates the links between the death squads and high-ranking Shia politicians. It reveals how the Shia militia that these politicians control have systematically infiltrated and taken over police units and even entire government ministeries. It investigates how these units are closely linked to the death squads, indeed they often are the death squads. And the killers act with impunity - there's little investigation into their activities.

Your original statement was that Iran had killed 350,000 Sunnis in Syria and 550,000 Sunnis in Iraq. When I started talking about the Iran/Iraq war you said no your numbers were the numbers since the US pulled out of Iraq in 2011.

As to your source,

I tried to look up who had pulled the documentary together. Took a lot of digging but the only name I could come up with was Deborah Davies, evidently the producer. On a movie site, I saw it cost about $200k to produce it. Other than that, not much.Wikipedia had nothing on the film or Deborah Davis. I could find no reviews on the film. Nothing in Amazon.

Problems with the documentary:

1. It was filmed in 2006 not after 2011.2. It was filmed at the height of Bush's Iraq war and there were still five years to go before the US pulled out in 2011.3. Estimates are all over the map on the number of people killed in the war, from 150,000 to 1,000,000 but that is from all deaths, Sunni, Shia, Kurds, Christians, other and it includes US troops and Iraqi army troops in the later years.4. A portion of the killing the Shias did was the internecine fighting among competing Shia groups.

5. It is unlikely 500,000 Sunni were killed during the war.

However, even if they were (unlikely since only 500,000 total Iraqis, Sunni, Shia, Kurd, etc.are estimated to have died in the 8 year total war between Iran and Iran) it still says nothing about your statement that that many had been killed since 2011. To say 550,000 Sunnis have been killed in Iraq since 2011 is absurd.

The same applies to the Syrian numbers. The range of estimates of the dead since 2011 runs the gamut from 140,000 to 340,000 with most of them around 220,000. Even with the 340,000, that is the top end of the Syrian Observatory numbers that run from 250,000 to 340,000. So you take the top estimate and add another 10,000 on it. But the numbers quoted here are total numbers, they include both sides of the conflict, Sunni, Shia, Druze, Christian, Alawites,Kurds, etc.

Bottom Line: Not only is you source questionable, it is also irrelevant since it was filmed 5 years before the US troops were pulled out of Iraq by Obama in 2011.

A man throws out a number that is unsubstantiated and unsourced, on a video that no one has ever seen, by a woman no one has ever heard of and then complains about Wikipedia (which he cites if it suits him) as a source. You can't make this up.

But it gets better...

He uses that documentary as proof/verification of alleged actions that wouldn't take place until five years after the documentary is released.

He didn't bother to check on when the documentary was made.

He didn't bother to see if it was even about the same war.

Then he makes a claim that is absurd on its face even without the goofy documentary.

So, once again, we get a view into the mind of the Ohio candyman and once again we leave aghast and disappointed.

...Recordings of the IDF assault, publicized last week, suggest a chaotic and undisciplined outburst of violence: “I repeat, stop the shooting!” the brigade commander yells over the field radio. “You’re shooting like retards. You’ll kill one another. Enough! I already have dead, retards. Wait a minute…”

Jihad WatchExposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Robert Spencer in PJ Media: Hamtramck, MI, Becomes First U.S. City with Muslim-Majority Council, Hilarity Ensues

November 10, 2015 2:53 pm By Robert Spencer 25 Comments

In PJ Media today, I show how there was almost immediately trouble in the multiculturalist paradise:

Ibrahim Algahim

The nation’s first, but certainly not last, majority-Muslim city council has just been elected in Hamtramck, Michigan, a historically Polish city. But before anyone could break out the sparkling grape juice and toast our new diversity, Ibrahim Algahim — a Muslim activist in Hamtramck – crowed at a victory party:

[H]istory [was made] in Hamtramck as voters elected the first majority Muslim city council in the country.

But rather than ease racial tensions, the comments from a Muslim organizer threaten to divide. [Algahim’s comment] may create or widen the rift between the growing Muslim and shrinking Polish community in Hamtramck.

One of those with rising tensions was one of the defeated — and Polish — city council candidates, Cathie Lisinki-Gordon:

I’m shocked that he said that. I’m a very good friend of his. I cannot believe that he would ever profile any select group. Especially when his community has felt ostracized and profiled for many years.

So ostracized and profiled … that they were able to gain a majority on the city council.

Lisinski-Gordon’s shock at her good friend Algahim’s words apparently stems from her assumption that Muslims are victims of bigotry and “Islamophobia,” and should thus know better than to take a hostile stance toward another group. Muslims, as the primary victims in today’s victimhood-obsessed culture, should be most energetic in carrying the multiculturalist torch and welcoming diversity, rather than encouraging tribalism and division.

Even though Algahim spoiled the party, no one was ready to declare Hamtramck’s exemplary exercise in diversity a failure. Bill Meyer, a supporter of Algahim, defended him:

What Algahim was saying at the time was he was meaning that the Yemeni and Bangladeshi communities worked together to go forward with a successful election. … The ultimate goal is to work together. We’ve got a great possibility of showing the world how great people can work together, ethnic groups can work together, to solve problems.

Of course. What better way to say “our communities worked together” than “today we show the Polish”?

Leaving aside the salient fact that Islam is a belief system held by people of all ethnicities and not an ethnic group, the key problem with Meyer’s hope is that Ibrahim Algahim’s victory statement strongly suggested that he, and possibly the Muslim councilmen, are not quite as multicultural as Meyer, Lisinski-Gordon, and others assume them to be.

But people like Lisinski-Gordon and Meyer wouldn’t dream of entertaining that possibility. That would place them in the camp of “racists” and “Islamophobes.” They’d rather go to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State, than go there.

Will we see any supremacist and pro-Sharia initiatives from this city council? Yes, if they decide to set out on a course designed to “show the Polish and everybody else.” Everywhere in the world that Muslims have ever held political power, non-Muslims have suffered a diminution of their rights. Generally it begins with demands that they curtail behavior that violates Islamic law or offends Muslim sensibilities, and it develops into an increasingly precarious day-to-day existence….

But people like Lisinski-Gordon and Meyer wouldn’t dream of entertaining that possibility. That would place them in the camp of “racists” and “Islamophobes.” They’d rather go to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State, than go there.

Why I have always contended that Robert Spencer is as batty as an Idaho English major.

Knife-wielding “Palestinian” boys attack guard in JerusalemBy Robert Spencer on Nov 10, 2015 12:44 pmKnife-wielding “Palestinian” boys attack guard in JerusalemThis is the sort of behavior that is encouraged daily on “Palestinian” TV and by Muslim clerics in the “Palestinian” territories. Yet the world has nothing to say about this genocidal incitement. “Knife-wielding Palestinian boys attack guard in Jerusalem,” by Yaron Steinbuch, New York Post, November 10, 2015: Two knife-wielding Palestinian boys — ages 12 […]Read in browser »

Another “Palestinian” Muslim woman attempts to stab Israeli security guardBy Robert Spencer on Nov 10, 2015 12:35 pmAnother “Palestinian” Muslim woman attempts to stab Israeli security guardThis incident is almost identical to one from the previous day. This savage behavior was directly incited by Muslim clerics such as Sheikh Muhammad Sallah “Abu Rajab” and Abu Hamza ‘Ashur. “Chilling suicide note found on the body of Palestinian woman intent on stabbing Israeli security guard when she was gunned down just hours after […]Read in browser »

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Tennessee: Muslim City of Oak Ridge employee kept wife virtual prisoner under Sharia lawBy Robert Spencer on Nov 10, 2015 11:04 amTennessee: Muslim City of Oak Ridge employee kept wife virtual prisoner under Sharia lawUPDATE: Madina Sall is also apparently the victim of a forced marriage: “Ba is the city of Oak Ridge electric project manager and has been employed by the city since May 2009. He is also a reserve officer with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. Court records state he is also in the Army Reserve. Documents […]Read in browser »

This last might seem to some here as an excellent opportunity for resolution by an 'alternative legal system' - some kind of 'marital dispute' going on between muslims - time for it to be resolved in some alternative and fair minded Sharia Court.....she don't need the American legal system.....

For the last seven years, Missouri has had a Democratic governor to orchestrate the pretending. Fear of his own base caused Gov. Jay Nixon to pretend Ferguson protestors had a case. Ditto at MU. During his tenure, Nixon has appointed a liberal Board of Curators, and they in turn chose the liberal businessman Tim Wolfe to head up the MU system. Wolfe has no operational responsibility at the flagship campus in Columbia.

As far as I can tell, the protesters singled him out rather than MU-Columbia Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin because Wolfe did not choose to meet with the protestors, that being the chancellor's job. Under pressure from his deans, Loftin resigned anyhow.

As the social justice movement enters its Jacobin phase, I can only wonder what a James Meredith might think about the incidents that caused the protest. An Air Force vet, James Meredith risked his life to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962, a harrowing tale well chronicled in William Doyle's An American Insurrection. Less well-known is that Meredith became a Republican and an adviser to Sen. Jesse Helms.

By contrast, the three incidents that triggered the MU protests are scarcely worthy of a Facebook meme, let alone a book. The president of student government said that people in a passing pickup truck shouted racial slurs at him. (Meredith was never in any danger of being elected student body president at Mississippi.) In early October, a drunken white student made a "hurtful" remark to members of the Legion of Black Collegians (LBC). He was promptly thrown out of school. In a third incident, someone reportedly smeared feces into a swastika in a dormitory bathroom. What this has to with African-Americans I am not at all certain.

These were incident enough, however, to trigger a hunger strike, a walkout by the black half of the football team, the resignations of the university president and chancellor for no particular offense, and a national media firestorm.

I got a chuckle out of this - a Tribe of 600 with a a $Billion Dollar bill.....tribal elections turned by 23 votes....

heh - only in America.....

Miccosukee Tribe ousts leader over $1 billion tax dispute with IRS

The chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe has been ousted because of his efforts to resolve a longstanding dispute with the federal government over an income-tax bill now totaling more than $1 billion.

The tribe’s general council voted to remove Colley Billie, who has two years remaining in his second term, as he attempted to settle the nasty legal battle with the Internal Revenue Service and started to withhold taxes from casino gambling distributions to some 600 members — a step the IRS demanded in legal action.

The council, consisting of members of the West Miami-Dade County tribe, voiced its discontent in a petition accusing him of depleting $82 million from a reserve account set aside for paying back taxes owed to the IRS. In the impeachment petition, the council also highlighted that at Billie’s direction, the tribe has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue at its casino operation with bingo-style slot machines and poker.

And, the petition accused Billie of misappropriating unspecified funds for his own personal use.

“Colley Billie has failed to perform the duties of chairman and protect the resources and follow the ordinances and laws of the tribe,” declared the petition, which the council approved on Thursday.

Billie, who was elected as chairman in 2009 and reelected four years later, could not be reached. An attorney for the tribe, Steve Davis, said Tuesday that it declined to comment for this story. Billie has been replaced on an interim basis by the tribe’s assistant chairman, Roy Cypress Jr. The tribe is scheduled to hold an election for a new chairman in 2017.

In November 2013, Billie defeated his archenemy, Billy Cypress, by a slim margin of 23 votes for the leadership of the tribe.

So, if the Minneapolis Fed felt the need to maintain conservation of NK, they could have chosen to replace Narayana Kocherlakota with a New Keynesian. Instead, they chose Neel Kashkari. Brad DeLong isn’t happy, and this Twitter exchange suggests that he has good reason to worry.

I’ve written before about the all-too-common fallacy of confusing demand with supply, of arguing that because we had a bubble — so that some component of aggregate demand was unsustainable — the economy as a whole was somehow producing more than its potential. Let me just repeat what I said then:

Just a brief note: one thing that keeps appearing in comments is the notion that because we had a bubble, in which some people were borrowing too much, the economic growth of 2000-2007 wasn’t “real” — that it was all a figment of our imagination.

This is confusing demand with supply.

We really did produce all the goods and services counted in GDP; we were able to do that because we had willing workers, a sufficient capital stock, the right technology, and so on.

What is true is that some of the spending that created demand for those goods and services was debt-financed, and those debtors can’t continue to spend the way they did. But that doesn’t say that the capacity has somehow ceased to exist; it only says that if we want to keep the capacity in use, someone else has to spend instead. In other words, past growth wasn’t an illusion, or a fraud; but we need policies to sustain aggregate demand.

But now we are about to have a Fed president who says:

How’s this? Growth was artificially fast due to leveraging of econ. Trying to return to that rate thru def spend is futile.

In the words of Charlie Brown, AAUGH!

That word “artificially” is the real telltale, as is Kashkari’s description of Japanese monetary stimulus as “morphine.” It’s straight out of the liquidationist playbook, e.g. Hayek denouncing the use of “artificial stimulants” to fight the Great Depression.

So, great: we now have a liquidationist in a senior position in the Fed system.

November 11, 2015Mizzou hunger striker protesting 'white privilege' has a father making $6 million last yearBy Thomas Lifson

No, this is not from The Onion. And yes, it is rich. With a hat tip to Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, check out this from Erin Grace of Omaha.com, the website of the Omaha World-Herald:

Listening to the radio before school Monday, Jimmie Foster heard a familiar name: Jonathan Butler.

The Omaha Central High teacher froze.

Could this Jonathan Butler — the one at that moment beginning his eighth day of a hunger strike at the University of Missouri — be the same Jonathan Butler who wrestled for him more than a decade ago as a freshman?

Could the quiet kid he knew in high school be the same young adult at the center of a storm about to bring down the house at Missouri’s flagship school?

It turns out, yes he is. And:

Butler has said in news reports that his paternal grandfather, an attorney helping the poor in New York City, was a big influence. So were his parents: Eric is a Union Pacific executive and Cynthia is a former educator who runs an advocacy program.

And the organization in which his father is an executive is the Union Pacific Railroad, one of the biggest companies in the country, where he earned over $6 million last year as executive vice president for marketing and sales.................

Sean Davis at The Federalist asks a worthwhile question, given the hundreds of documented fake hate crimes, usually perpetrated for the purpose of launching political reactions. The reason why the purported swastika drawn with feces at Mizzou is suspicious is:

… no evidence of the alleged incident, in which a poop swastika on the wall of a dormitory restroom was reported, has ever been made publicly available. Did this incident occur as reported, or was it an immaculate defecation that formed the foundation of an unimaginable deception?

According to Billy Donley, the president of Mizzou’s Residence Halls Association (RHA), the poop swastika was reported at approximately 2:00 a.m. on October 24, 2015.

“On Saturday, October 24th, at 2:00am an individual came into one of the restrooms in Gateway Hall and drew a swastika on the wall with their own feces,” Donley wrote in a letter several days after the alleged incident. “This event happened while many students, including myself, were already asleep.”

Later in his letter, Donley noted that he only found out about the alleged vandalism incident “via a flyer posted on the walls” of the dorm.

Although Donley did not respond to repeated requests for comment prior to publication, The Federalist spoke with two RHA staffers while trying to get in touch with Donley. Neither had personally witnessed the poop swastika. When asked if there was any photographic evidence of the alleged incident, one staffer replied, “Not to my knowledge.”

No on-the-record eyewitnesses and no photographic evidence. That is suspicious.

The Federalist has attempted to get comments from authorities involved, but so far nothing has been offered in response. So there is only one alterative:

Under the provisions of Missouri’s broad public records laws, The Federalist has requested from the University of Missouri copies of any and all records relating to the alleged vandalism, including any police or incident reports describing the investigation of the poop swastika by law enforcement authorities, as well as any photographic records of the alleged swastika, and will make that information available if and when it is received from university officials.

One of the highlights (?) of the Republican debate Tuesday night didn't actually happen on the stage, but during a commercial break when a truly bizarre attack ad ran. The ad is like something out of "1984" or Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," showing a room full of robotic bureaucrats stamping "DENIED" on loan applications. This is supposed to portray the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which explains why these bureaucrats are working beneath huge, Soviet-like banners depicting Sen. Elizabeth Warren and CFPB director Richard Cordray.

But the ad does not disclose that the group sponsoring it is led by lobbyists for Navient, a student loan company that the CFPB is currently investigating for allegedly cheating student loan borrowers. […]The American Action Network, the sponsor of the advertisement, is led by a team of lobbyists employed to beat back consumer protection regulations on behalf of industry clients. American Action Network board member Vin Weber is a lobbyist at Mercury LLC, where he is registered to work as a Navient lobbyist. On his registration forms, Weber says he specifically works on matters related to the CFPB.

Weber's colleague on the board, Tom Reynolds, is also a registered lobbyist for Navient through the law firm Nixon Peabody. And another American Action Network board member, Barry Jackson, works with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shreck, a lobbying firm that serves a number of student loan and payday lending firms on issues relating to the CFPB.

Navient has been the subject of investigations "for at least two years by several federal and state authorities for allegedly overcharging borrowers and otherwise mistreating them in violation of the law." One of those authorities is the New York Department of Financial Services, one of the most feared watchdogs on Wall Street.

So, yes, Navient is in trouble from a lot of sources, but the easiest one to fight politically is the CFPB because it was Elizabeth Warren's idea, because it is an agency of the Obama White House and because Fox viewers are actually gullible enough to believe that the CFPB has the authority to deny anyone a loan application. (It doesn't.) It also doesn't have the authority that Carly Fiorina claimed in Tuesday's debate: "We've created something called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ... that's digging through hundreds of millions of YOUR credit records to (finger quote) detect fraud." That, of course, isn't how it works. Yeah, I know, Fiorina lied. Stop the presses.

What the CFPB has actually done in its five years of existence is recover more than $10 billion for consumers who have been cheated by financial services companies. You know, Consumer Protection, just like it says in the title.

I would disagree with the title of this piece though. It is not new. I saw the same close mindedness and bullying on campus when I was there in the late 60's participating in assemblies debating the Vietnam War. Prissy little sociology professors with their toady minions shouting down anyone who tried to present a different take on the war even those who had experienced it and were now trying to get their lives back together.

A liberal (in the good sense of the word) education is supposed to offer the student a chance to explore all kinds of positions and then come to his own conclusions. It doesn't. Peer pressure and bullying prevail.

No. Not at all. By assuming your hyperbole and tactics you make yourself look foolish and thereby diminish any argument you present. Nothing personal. That's just the way it works.

So Mr Quirk, how many lives are acceptable to you to be lost by Iran in Iraq?

None. The question is stupid. Loss of life is not something any rational person should hope for. Unfortunately, shit happens. There are even times when circumstances demand it. It should not be applauded.

How many do you concede?

(See answer above)

How many civilians are ok to be murdered in syria with Iran's assistance?

(See answer above)

In Gaza, 2200 were killed 1/2 being terrorists and deuce had a cow..

So??????

but you glibly reject my thesis on iraq and syria?

Not sure what thesis you are talking about so I will assume that it is that 'Iran is responsible for killing 350,000 Sunnis in Syria and 550,000 Sunnis in Iraq since the US pulled out of Iraq in 2011.' If that is the case, then, yes I reject the thesis (meme, trope) but not glibly. I laid out my reasons for rejecting it

However, the "but" in your comment above forces me to ask, what has one to do with the other?

So how many dead by Iran's support?

It is impossible to say. In Iraq, since 2011 the US as been responsible for providing most of the aid there going to the Shia dominated government in Baghdad. In Syria, if we go by the broadest sense of the word 'support' then there is no doubt that Iran has contributed to much of the carnage. However, since other Gulf States and the US and coalition countries have 'supported' to varying degrees the opposition, and because so many sectarian groups have died, it is again hard to pin down a firm number.

100,000? 300,000?

If I were to hazard a guess, I would would say Iran has contributed to, or supported if you like, the government coalition forces that have taken out about 150,000 people (civilians and militants).

Pick a number.

(See answer above)

Show some spine..

(See answer above)

How many iraqis and syrians have been murdered with iranian support since the USA fled the scene.

(See answer above)

Ballpark, i will not spilt hairs with you as you spilt hairs with me.. (That's because I am better than you)

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided.

This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job...”

I have taken to using the word microaggressions myself though whenever my wife gets down on me about something, like the other day I told her some fool here was advocating Sharia alternative courts in USA, and she blew up at me.

Tuesday night, Republicans held another presidential debate, two of them actually. Yet because we worship at the altar of public opinion polls, the sponsoring network couldn’t find room on either stage for Sen. Lindsey Graham, the only military veteran in the field, which seems jarring today especially.

Veterans Day commemorations date back to 1919 when it was called Armistice Day in honor of the truce that ended World War I the year before.

“To us in America,” proclaimed President Woodrow Wilson, “the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.”

The first column I wrote on the Mizzou controversy analyzed the allegations and pointed out that firing a president had zero connection to any of the allegations or the demands for the protesters. In that column I accepted the protester's allegations as true. But as the week has gone on and the protesters have been exposed as anti-first amendment, selectively racist, and, last night, willing to perpetrate actual lies to get more attention, isn't it time to examine whether these incidents are actually real?

That is, what if there's actually zero basis for the strike in the first place? What if these alleged incidents never happened and the media just accepted them without asking any questions at all? The entire protest is based on three things, none of which have been independently verified, a poopswastika, an off-campus racial slur, and an on campus racial slur.

Because if everyone else starts asking the same questions I'm asking it's hard to come to any conclusion other than this one: this entire University of Missouri protest is a manufactured sham.

...

If you want more discussion, check your privilege, bro and also check out last night's Periscope session on Mizzou, the first amendment and politics. And just to blow your minds, I've worked in Democratic politics my entire life -- on Presidential, congressional and Senate races -- and am a white dude from the South who voted for Obama twice.

We need to search the White House basement to get to the bottom of this.

Truman almost doubled the minimum wage. A year later, the unemployment rate was dramatically lower.

By John Nichols

Of course Dr. Ben Carson was wrong when he claimed in the fourth Republican presidential debate that “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases.”

The Pulitzer Prize–winning analysts at PolitiFact rated that statement “false”—with no qualifiers or wiggle words like “mostly.”

Minimum-wage hikes are not always associated with immediate spikes in employment; especially in recessionary moments. But PolitiFact notes that “[of the] five minimum wage hikes that occurred when a recovery was under way, joblessness declined four of those times.”

The PolitiFact rebuke was even more stark than the response from Egypt’s antiquities minister to Carson’s claim that the pyramids were built as grain silos—“Does he even deserve a response? He doesn’t.”

So Carson got the economics of minimum-wage increases wrong, as did the other Republican contenders who said “no” to living-wage proposals during Tuesday’s debate. Billionaire Donald Trump was really wrong when he suggested that the problem facing America is “high wages,” and Florida Senator Marco Rubio was really, really wrong when he argued for permanent wage stagnation as a check against job losses to automation.

Carson: “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases.” PolitiFact: “False.” But if all the Republican front-runners are wrong, it does not necessarily follow that all Democrats are right. There are plenty of cautious Democrats who favor far smaller increases than those proposed by advocates for a living wage.

Doubling the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour, as activists demand, and as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley propose, may seem like an audacious move to those who are unaware of the history of wage hikes.

But it would not be unprecedented.

History tells us that doubling the minimum wage would not pose the threat to employment imagined by Carson and his partisan compatriots.

President Harry Truman ran for a full term in 1948 on an economic-populist program that called for increasing what was then a 40-cents-an-hour minimum wage. He made it part of an appeal not merely for his own election but for the election of a Democratic Congress—reminding the electorate that the Republican-controlled House and Senate had thwarted his efforts to improve circumstances for working Americans.” I recommended an increase in the minimum wage,” the president told the Democratic National Convention. “What did I get? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

The voters got the message. Despite polls that claimed the Republicans would prevail, Truman was easily reelected and Democrats picked up 75 seats in the House—their largest gain since the Franklin Roosevelt landslide of 1932. Democrats also picked up nine US Senate seats. So sweeping was the victory that Democrats took control of both chambers.

Truman recognized a mandate when he saw one. And he moved quickly to implement a “Fair Deal” program that sought to extend on the progress made by FDR’s “New Deal.” One of the 33rd president’s boldest proposals was a major minimum-wage increase; he sought to raise the base wage from 40 cents an hour to 75 cents an hour.

Corporate interests howled, as did Republicans in Congress—and even some conservative Democrats.

But Truman pressed forward, declaring, “It is a measure dictated by social justice. It adds to our economic strength. It is founded on the belief that full human dignity requires at least a minimum level of economic sufficiency and security.”

Congress approved the increase. Truman signed the legislation and on January 24, 1950, he announced: “At midnight tonight the lot of a great many American workers will be substantially improved. Today the minimum wage is 40 cents an hour. Tomorrow the new 75-cent minimum rate goes into effect for the 22 million workers who are protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, our Federal wage-hour law. Another amendment to that law will provide greatly increased protection for our young boys and girls against dangerous industrial work.”

The president framed the decision to almost double wages in moral and historic terms, explaining, “For many generations we have recognized that there are legitimate roles for the Government to play in protecting our people from economic injustice and hardship. Our Founding Fathers explicitly stated this. In the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, it is declared that this Government was established, among other reasons, to ‘promote the general welfare.’”

When the wage hike was implemented, in January 1950, the unemployment rate was 6.5 percent.

One year later, in January 1951, the unemployment rate was 3.7 percent.

“We shall not relax in our efforts to provide a better life for all our people.”—Harry Truman on wage hikesTruman counseled at the time of the minimum-wage increase that it would undoubtedly be necessary to raise wages again as part on a long-term strategy for bettering the circumstance of the nation and its people. He urged his successors to recognize that “Our progress in this field points the way for our future action. We shall not relax in our efforts to provide a better life for all our people.”

Dwight Eisenhower listened. He signed a measure that in the spring of 1956 increased the minimum wage from 75 cents an hour to $1 an hour. The unemployment rate was at 4.2 percent when he signed it. A year later, it had fallen to 3.7 percent.

Eisenhower and his allies referred to themselves as “modern Republicans.”

Unfortunately, that is not the term that can be used for Dr. Carson, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and the other Republicans who mangle the facts in attempting to make the case against what Franklin Roosevelt taught us was necessary and possible: “the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment.”

U.S. Arrests Two Relatives of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Drug-Trafficking Charges

U.S. agents arrest two on charges they conspired to transport 800 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S., according to two people familiar with the matter

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, left, waved next to his wife Cilia Flores during a meeting with supporters last month in Caracas. By José de CórdobaUpdated Nov. 11, 2015 7:28 p.m. ET

U.S. agents have arrested two relatives of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on charges they conspired to transport 800 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S., according to two people familiar with the matter.

The arrests come amid U.S. accusations that the top echelon of the government in Caracas is involved in the narcotics trade.

The two men, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, were first arrested in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Tuesday by local police, turned over to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and flown the same day to New York in a DEA jet, these people said. The two were scheduled to go before a federal judge in New York on Thursday, they said. A spokesman for the federal district court declined to comment.Related

U.S. Charges Top Former Venezuelan Officials With Drug Trafficking (Oct. 2) Venezuelan Officials Suspected of Turning Country into Global Cocaine Hub (May 18) Top Venezuelan Bodyguard Defects to U.S. (Jan. 27)

Mr. Campo Flores, 29 years old, identified himself on the DEA plane as a stepson of the president, according to the people familiar with the matter, having been raised by his aunt, Cilia Flores, who is Mr. Maduro’s wife. A U.S. document said the other man identified himself as a nephew of Ms. Flores.

Ms. Flores, 62 years old, is one of the most powerful figures in Venezuela’s government. The longtime partner of Mr. Maduro, she married him in July 2013 after his election as president.

Before becoming first lady—or “first combatant,” as she is known in Venezuela—Ms. Flores was president of the National Assembly. Ms. Flores has put many of her relatives in important government positions, including another nephew, Carlos Erick Malpica Flores, who is the chief financial officer of state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela and the country’s treasurer.

The arrests of the two men come as prosecutors in New York, Washington and Miami are pursuing numerous investigations into alleged drug-trafficking and money-laundering activities of top Venezuelan military, police and government officials, according to U.S. officials.

U.S. officials have long said Venezuela is the main transit point for cocaine from neighboring Colombia. Caracas routinely denies allegations that it is involved in drug trafficking, characterizing them as efforts to destabilize Venezuela’s leftist government.

But military officers and officials who have fled Venezuela for the U.S. describe a government unable to mend a broken economy and allegedly involved in drug trafficking.................

Confirmed: Ben Carson would not abort baby Hitlerposted at 9:21 pm on November 11, 2015 by Allahpundit

To cleanse the palate, a bit of trolling by lefty sports-media satirist PFT Commenter that’s been made oddly topical by Jeb Bush. Sean Trende tweeted a few days ago that the chaos in this year’s primary can be laid mostly at Jeb’s feet — if he hadn’t spooked Bush-weary Republicans by jumping in, if he hadn’t irritated everyone by raising a ton of money off of family connections at the very beginning, the craving for outsiders that’s propelling Trump and Carson might not have been as strong this year as it is. Now you can thank Jeb for something else, making “would you kill baby Hitler?” a semi-serious topic for Republican candidates. Every candidate must be put on the record. What say you, Donald Trump? Will you smother the infant Fuhrer in his crib?

"would you abort baby Hitler" > "so how are you feeling about your Iowa numbers?"

— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) November 11, 2015

Carson’s answer here is, of course, correct. The book on this subject will not be closed, though, until one of the candidates is forced to riff on what baby Europe might have looked like circa 1960 if baby Hitler was snuffed but baby Stalin wasn’t. Cruz is the egghead of the field. I’ll bet he could do 20 minutes of “a world without Hitler” counterfactuals cold.

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Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.